Anger and Dismay at the Sale of a City Treasure
Anheuser-Busch traces its roots to before the Civil War. The company on Monday accepted a sweetened $52 billion takeover offer by the Belgian beer giant InBev.
ST. LOUIS — With the shades inside a tavern on Pestalozzi Street drawn to block the early morning sun, Dave Liszewski, a third-shift worker at Anheuser-Busch, nursed a bottle of Bud Light and a hollowed sense of pride.
“It took everybody by surprise,” Dave Liszewski, a 30-year employee who operates a machine that puts labels on bottles, said of the takeover deal. “They promised us this wouldn’t happen.”
“We were betrayed,” said Mr. Liszewski, who was still not sure he could believe the news that the company had agreed to be sold. “The good Lord was sold out for 30 pieces of silver. We were sold out for $70 a share.”
August A. Busch IV, the scion who runs the family brewery that makes Budweiser and Michelob and dates to before the Civil War, had vowed that there would be no sale on his watch. But in the end, sentiment and tradition were no match for a $52 billion offer from the Belgian beer giant InBev.
All around this old Midwestern city famous for its brew, heads have been shaking in disbelief. Budweiser, the king of American beers, will belong to Europe.
“It took everybody by surprise,” said Mr. Liszewski, a member of the Teamsters union who followed his uncle into the brewery 30 years ago. “They promised us this wouldn’t happen.”
An American flag snaps high above the belching stacks of the brewery, a red-brick and wrought-iron fortress in the historic Soulard neighborhood, where the air is tinged with the smell of yeast.
The Anheuser-Busch dynasty is so ingrained in the identity of St. Louis that people here talk about the Busch family as if they are both royalty and relatives, making references to “Gussie” (August A. Busch Jr.) and “Augie” (August A. Busch III).
In a city that does not do much bragging, the mighty brewery has long been a reason to boast.
“St. Louis has a terrible inferiority complex,” said Susan Manlin Katman, sitting in the shade at an outdoor cafe in the trendy Central West End neighborhood. “We’re not North or South, East or West. So we tend to dwell on what we’re lacking, instead of what we have.”
Downtown St. Louis has witnessed a striking resurgence in recent years, with the opening of stylish pubs and restaurants and the refurbishing of residential lofts. With its French and German influences, St. Louis has a rich cultural history and an architectural flourish. It has exulted in the glories of Cardinal baseball heroes, from Stan Musial to Albert Pujols. The city also claims Forest Park, an urban nature preserve near downtown that is bigger than Central Park.
But for all that, its national acclaim is tied mostly to the brewery — it brings the tourists to town, along with the Gateway Arch. Almost anywhere in the world that residents of St. Louis travel, they are asked about the King of Beers and, of course, the Clydesdales, the mascots of the brewery.
InBev has pledged not to shut down any of Anheuser-Busch’s 12 breweries in the United States. But many here still feel here as if a treasure is endangered.
As Opal Henderson, a 78-year-old auto salvage yard owner, put it, “Why can’t those foreigners just stay at home and leave us what we have?”
Mayor Francis G. Slay has a different view. “One of my first goals,” he said in a statement, “will be to try to convince InBev, which loves to cut costs, to move to St. Louis, where pretty much everything is cheaper than in Belgium.”
That is not likely to happen. Among the 6,000 St. Louis-area workers employed at A-B, as it is known here, the worry is that the new owner will try to cut jobs or wages.
Mr. Liszewski, who operates a machine that puts labels on bottles of Bud Light, earns $27 an hour. He is a blue-collar man in work boots who has been able to pay off his house and buy land in Southern Illinois where he can hunt for deer. “It’s not just been a good life,” he said. “It’s been an excellent life.”
At the St. Louis Galleria, Alexis Littlejohn, a bank worker, said she believed that the new owners think they have a way to squeeze more profits out of the brewery. “If it didn’t make economic sense,” she said, “they wouldn’t be doing it.”
In the bars around the brewery district, there is a mixture of anger and fear, even among those who do not work for Anheuser-Busch.
Loyalty runs deep for the brewery and its workers. If you order a beer at Crabby’s saloon, it had better be an Anheuser-Busch product. They do not carry anything else.
The owner, Stephanie Hafertebe, certainly does not stock any Stella Artois, a beer made by InBev.
“Not so many years ago, union workers would walk out of a place if you served anything that wasn’t Anheuser-Busch,” Ms. Hafertebe said.
A couple of patrons were shooting pool. A cocker spaniel was crawling around the floor. On the jukebox, Frank Sinatra crooned, “I get no kick from Champagne.”
Tom Lucas, a 51-year-old auto mechanic with oil-stained fingers, sat on a barstool and drew hard on a cigarette.
St. Louis is a place where people can still smoke in taverns. But everything else seems to be changing. The idea of the brewery belonging to foreigners seemed unfathomable to many. People like Mr. Lucas may have to get used to it. But he does not have to like it.
“It stinks,” Mr. Lucas said. “Augie would be rolling in his grave if he knew about this.”
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